A&M’s Sharp should heed calls to preserve academic freedom
Joy Alonzo is an award-winning Texas A&M pharmacy professor on a mission to save lives in the worst drug crisis in American history.
What mission was Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick on when he apparently tried to have her fired?
We can’t be sure, but we suspect it was a self-serving mission that was more about ego, paranoia, and even authoritarianism, than about serving the people of Texas.
And it was definitely contrary to the mission many Republicans tout these days to cancel cancel-culture and defend free speech.
Texas A&M University finds itself at the center of yet another controversy over political influence and academic freedom following the Texas Tribune’s report that Alonzo was placed on administrative leave in March after making a disparaging comment about Patrick during a lecture at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.
Alonzo has taught college students for 12 years, including at the University of Houston.
She’s published research on the effects of prescription drugs and led task forces on the opioid crisis.
She’s given out millions of dollars’ worth of Narcan, a nasal spray that can save people from opioid overdoses.
She’s exactly the person who should be sharing unvarnished opinions on the urgency of the nation’s opioid crisis with future doctors, nurses, and pharmacists, as she did on March 7 at UTMB.
Alonzo’s remark kick-started a chain of communication involving the lieutenant governor and university officials, leading to a text message from A&M Chancellor John Sharp to Patrick informing him that “Joy Alonzo has been placed on administrative leave pending investigation re firing her. shud (sic) be finished by end of week.”
Alonzo’s exact words about Patrick are still unclear, but here’s what we know, per the Tribune: During her slide presentation, she covered a wide range of topics, from how to administer life-saving drugs, to the state’s inadequate response to the opioid crisis.
According to student accounts, Alonzo indicated that Patrick was standing in the way of policies that could help prevent opioid-related deaths, citing the state’s ban on test strips, which can help drug users detect fentanyl in other drugs.
She has a point. Fentanyl deaths in Texas have increased by 400% in the past two years. Test strips for fentanyl have been endorsed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and even Patrick’s fellow Republican, Gov. Greg Abbott, had a change of heart in backing legislation that would have legalized the life-saving test strips.
Yet, the legislation failed and lawmakers chose instead to target fentanyl dealers, dramatically increasing penalties for anyone who provides a fatal dose of the powerful opioid, fentanyl.
You’d think that Alonzo’s frank talk about this life-anddeath crisis would be welcomed. Instead, her reference to Patrick got her censured by UTMB in a mass email minutes after her lecture concluded. Alonzo’s comment was reportedly brought to the attention of Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham, who phoned Patrick about it.
The Tribune reported that Buckingham’s daughter, a firstyear medical student at UTMB, attended the lecture.
A&M ended up lifting Alonzo’s leave after two weeks and she kept her job. George Udeani, the university’s pharmacy school dean, said in a memo that Alonzo simply “related an anecdote and an interaction with a state official,” which some audience members found offensive. A&M’s faculty senate, meanwhile, condemned the investigation during a meeting with Sharp last week, noting that such incidents have a chilling effect on not only academic freedom but the university’s desire to attract and retain talented faculty members.
And isn’t that still a priority in Texas? Aren’t the reputations of our prestigious universities still valuable to our top state officials? They employ and educate thousands, bring in untold millions of dollars for research and local economies.
They help define what Texas means to the world.
Muzzling professors isn’t in the interest of the state–only the interest of self-important politicians who can’t stomach a fair critique.
The episode is reminiscent of Patrick’s attempt to do away with tenure, apparently targeted at “leftist professors” who teach critical race theory. He ignored the fact that tenure helps protect professors with conservative opinions, too.
Similarly, by leading the charge to ban Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs, Patrick failed to consider how those policies could be broadened to include more conservatives among ideologically diverse faculty.
There was a time when conservatives and liberals agreed, or at least paid lip service to the notion that, free speech and academic freedom should be protected regardless of ideology or outside political influence.
Take Buckingham, who sparked the investigation into Alonzo.
Back when she was a firstterm Republican state senator in 2017, she filed a bill stating that Texas public universities “may not punish a student or employee in any manner for engaging in expressive activities.”
Even Sharp, the A&M system’s trailblazing chancellor and a former Democratic lawmaker and comptroller who prides himself on countrified straighttalk, has demurred in this moment crying out for leadership.
This is a man who told Texas Monthly’s Michael Hardy in 2017 that leading his alma mater had been the most “liberating experience” of his life, in part because he made enough money in the private sector that he didn’t really need the job: “So I can truly do what Sam Houston said, which is do right and hell with the consequences.”
Where was that guy when Texas A&M began reneging on its agreements to Kathleen McElroy, a veteran Black journalist and Aggie alumna whom the university had recruited to lead its revived journalism program? Behind the scenes, the Texas Tribune reported, officials began whittling down the terms of McElroy’s contract after outside groups claimed her past work advancing diversity in newsrooms ran afoul of the state’s DEI ban. McElroy ended up declining the position.
The university president, M. Katherine Banks, has since resigned but Sharp, who usually champions diversity on campus, even admonishing his staff recently for not recruiting enough Black students, has stayed quiet.
When the faculty senate called for A&M to show more backbone in resisting outside influences after the botched McElroy hire, Sharp replied in a letter that “outside influence is never welcome, nor invited.”
That wasn’t the message Sharp sent to Patrick in his dutiful text about Alonzo.
In a statement to the editorial board, A&M system spokesman Laylan Copelin noted that Alonzo had “no issue with how the university handled her case,” and that the university was forced to investigate only after UTMB censured her. Copelin indicated that Sharp would not stand in the way if the university opts to change policies concerning administrative leave.
Improving those processes, and the ones by which students lodge complaints, is one thing. Hearing Sharp and other university leaders condemn outside political influence and renew their commitments to academic freedom is what we need the most right now.
No, university leaders can’t just hole up in their ivory towers and alienate the powerful political leaders who help fund them. They have to deal with lawmakers but they don’t have to do their bidding.
Sharps’ ambitious elevation of Texas A&M is commendable, from boosting enrollment, to funding efforts to lure Nobel Laureates and National Academy of Sciences members, to partnering with Houston Methodist to graduate the nation’s first crop of “physicianeers,” trained to solve medical problems as both engineers and doctors.
We ask Sharp to add his talents and his wit to another endeavor that will improve A&M’s standing in academia and among prospective students: heed only the calls for free speech and academic freedom.
Let Patrick go to voicemail.
Let Dan Patrick go to voicemail
